Pierre Moossa, coordinating producer of NBC Sports Group’s English Premier League soccer coverage, describes the details of the control room inside the NBC Sports headquarters, at 1 Blachley Road, in Stamford, Conn. on Tuesday, July 18, 2017. less

Pierre Moossa, coordinating producer of NBC Sports Group’s English Premier League soccer coverage, describes the details of the control room inside the NBC Sports headquarters, at 1 Blachley Road, in ... more

The stars of NBC Sports Group’s English Premier League soccer broadcast team will kick off their coverage of the new season Friday at the stadium of London’s Arsenal Football Club.

But on most days they work at their home venue, Studio 3 in NBC Sports’ headquarters on Stamford’s East Side. Their coverage requires intricate planning and execution by a production team of dozens. The final result delivers each season more than 1,000 hours of programming that have scored a growing U.S. audience for one of the the world’s most-watched athletic leagues.

“The No. 1 goal we have is to grow the game of soccer in the United States,” Pierre Moossa, NBC Sports’ Premier League coordinating producer, said in an interview. “Making sure people learn to appreciate and love the game is our mission. And that comes along with helping them to appreciate what makes the Premier League so special.”

Trans-Atlantic production

This weekend’s England tour marks the first time since NBC started carrying Premier League matches in August 2013 that its entire on-air team would work together on location during the season’s opening round of games.

The same U.S.-based broadcast lineup has covered the past four seasons and will team up again for the new campaign. Rebecca Lowe anchors the shows, while former Premier League players Robbie Earle and Robbie Mustoe and former U.S. international and Major League Soccer player Kyle Martino serve as the analysts.

During the games, Studio 3 hums with activity as the broadcasters follow the action involving the Premier League’s 20 teams.

On the studio’s sprawling wall screen, they can watch a single game or follow multiple matches simultaneously as they prepare their analysis for halftime and post-game shows.

“We have a wonderful professional relationship where we all bring up the level of each other and support each other and push each other to be the best analysts we can be,” said Martino, a Weston resident and Westport native. “Those are some of my best friends.”

Alongside the on-air talent, the production roster includes a diverse mix of personnel who handle responsibilities including camera operating, lighting, directing and editing. On match days, they juggle 18 video feeds from the Premier League stadiums.

Moossa leads the broadcasts from the control room. From there, he coordinates with the studio contingent and NBC’s on-site team calling the games at the Premier League grounds. Broadcaster Arlo White is the play-by-play announcer, working alongside color commentators including former Premier League defenders Lee Dixon and Graeme Le Saux.

“There are a lot of people speaking very fast, on top of each other, but it’s controlled mass communication,” Moossa said.

The five-hour difference between the U.S. East Coast and England means crew members’ work in Stamford on match days can start as early as 4 a.m.

“It’s the worst hours in television,” said lighting director Sean Riley. “But it’s the only show I would want to wake up for.”

Growing the game

NBC’s TV coverage of the 2016-17 season reached 33 million viewers, the third time in the past four years the viewership topped more than 30 million. In comparison, about 13 million watched in 2012-13, the season that preceded NBC taking over the broadcasts.

Games on NBC networks averaged about 423,000 TV viewers last season, a drop of about 11 percent from the previous season’s average. NBC officials partly attributed the decline to fewer top games being scheduled in prime viewing hours. In the most-watched contest of the last campaign, Manchester United and Liverpool battled to a 1-1 draw Jan. 15 in front of 1.32 million.

Last season finished as the league’s most-streamed campaign on NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports app. The coverage reached 3 million unique users, compared with 2.6 million in the previous season.

NBC executives and sports-media experts see the Premier League’s relatively young viewership as a predictor of growth. Its 2016 median audience ran at 43 years old, in comparison with 57 for Major League Baseball, 50 for the NFL, 49 for the NHL and 42 for the NBA, according to a study commissioned by SportsBusiness Journal.

“If you ask students in one of my classes how many follow soccer, maybe half will say they follow European soccer, including the English Premier League,” said Daniel Durbin, director of the University of Southern California’s Institute of Sports, Media and Society. “They’re streaming it online, streaming it in mass numbers. They are really quite excited by it.”